355

Glenn Ligon

1960-

Black Like Me. 1993.

Oil stick and gesso on wove paper
Signed and dated in pencil, verso.
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm.)

  • Provenance: Acquired from Luhring Augustine, New York (August 24, 2006).
    Private Collection, Rhode Island.

    Black Like Me is a seminal composition from mixed media artist Glenn Ligon that experiments with notions of appearance and disappearance — a dichotomy frequently utilized in Ligon's investigation of texts relating to the history of Black people and identity politics. The gradual visual smudging of the oil stick allows the artist to degrade the visibility of the text and blurs the viewers to alter meaning and subjectivity. Literary appropriations are central in Glenn Ligon's work, having borrowed allusions from authors such as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison.

    Ligon's Black Like Me series is inspired by the 1961 autobiography of John Howard Griffin's account of the injustices of civil liberties in the southern United States in 1959. "Black Like Me" records his temporary transformation from a white man into a black man traveling through the American South in the 1960s. He chronologically documents his experience, the process of chemically darkening his skin with mid-century vitiligo medicine and tanning beds, and his interactions with white Americans as a Black man.

    In the present work, Ligon appropriates and isolates Griffin's observations and then subsequently repeats the text throughout: I LOOKED INTO THE MIRROR AND SAW REFLECTED NONE OF THE WHITE GRIFFIN'S PAST. Stenciled in stark black capital letters across the top of the canvas, the text repeats line after line until the words at the bottom dissolve into murky blackness challenging many socio-political issues that are relevant in contemporary society.
  • Condition:
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